When I was full of piss and wind, cool and smooth as a well-brushed curling stone, I picked a fight with my dad. I asked him why he'd never given me any advice. Weren't fathers supposed to hand over polished pebbles of wisdom, passed down from generation to generation? Wasn't he supposed to reach into his metaphorical waistcoat pocket and hand me the symbolic key of manhood, mentioning that I was supposed to keep it safe for my children, as his father had kept it for him, back and back, through to the campfire of our genetic dawn? My dad sighed and rolled his eyes. He paused for a moment and said, "If you ever get piles, get them sorted."

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ByJonathan Dean

"'Brush your shoes. And always stand up when a lady comes into a room.' I expect my grandfather told him, 'Never put off brushing your horse and don't take too long in the bath when others want to use the kitchen.' And his father probably said, 'Never trust a Frenchman.' And his father, 'Don't burn two candlesticks at once.' And his father..."

OK, I get the drift.

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And then my dad died. Not immediately. Not straight after he told me to get my piles done. Those weren't his last words, thank God. There's a Graham Greene story about a man whose dad dies suddenly and whenever he tells anyone they laugh. He has to mourn in private because his father is killed by a pig falling from a first-floor balcony. You see, you're laughing now. But imagine how tough that must be. Sadness in the middle of a joke that never stops being tragic and never stops being hilarious.

My dad died a couple of years back of Alzheimer's. That really isn't funny. Nobody laughs at Alzheimer's. But at least he wasn't taken out by livestock. As a matter of fact, he was terrified of farm animals. Hated walking across fields with four-legged things in them. Pretty much just hated fields. I remember once when I was very young, a curious heifer came up to us at a gate and Dad stood in front of me and confronted it, with his arms out like a football steward. I can see the look on his face, steely and grim, a clenched jaw. I climbed the gate laughing. It was only a cow. I hadn't thought about that for 40 years. And only now I realise he was being brave. For him it was a mad elephant, a mystical beast.

Since my dad died I've been thinking about him a lot, in a sepia sort of way. I hear him saying things and then I realise it's me talking. And I think about him because I've become a father again. Twins, a boy and a girl.

My second lot. I have a boy and a girl who are 14 and nearly 17. The twins will never see their grandfather, except in photographs from beyond the dawn of digital. I won't be able to tell them that when I put my head on one side and start saying things they don't want to know about stuff they're not interested in, in a school-marmish voice, that's not actually me talking. That's their grandad, speaking through the spooky hard drive of genetics. The poke of learned behaviour. And all together I've been considering and worrying about fatherhood, about how you do it, how he did it. I was looking through this magazine, the one you're holding, as I do every month, trying to find my column. How do you find anything in here? It's like my sock drawer. And it struck me that everything here is aspiration. The kit, the gadgets, the luxury, the adventure. It's all about being a type of pre-man. Active, attractive, amusing, energetic. A person without commitment or obligations. A fun guy who knows what time it is and smells nice. If we sat down and brainstormed who the identikit GQ reader was, and there are people around here who do little else, we'd get a long list of buzzy proactive words ranging from "incisively perceptive" to "donkey cock".

But if I asked you to write down a single word that encapsulated everything a GQ reader wasn't, "dad" would pretty much cover it, even if you happen to be a father yourself, regardless of how old you are. Dad is kryptonite to every page. The aspirations, the power of carefree, fleet-footed, keepy-uppy life that comes forever hyphenated with style. But at some time or other, sooner than we think, statistically almost all of us will become fathers. And it will be the most important thing we ever do. The most exciting, consuming, brilliant thing. Trust me. But we never talk about it. Because of the commitment and the obligation and the worry. There's nothing cool, wannabe or enviable about becoming a dad.

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It's not like winning Le Mans. Or mixing the perfect Martini. Or boning a Brazilian beach-volleyball star. Even grown-up men, old men, men with children at university, with second homes somewhere dull and sunny, come up to me with a cheese-eating grin and say, "Oh my God, nappies all over again. What were you thinking of? School fees till you die? Are you getting any sleep? Are you getting any sex?" This is the litany of working men's club punch-lines that blokes say to other blokes who are dads. It's as if we've all agreed to a conspiracy of ghastliness that is fatherhood, this nappy-faced treadmill of penury, exhaustion, celibacy and bank holidays in Legoland. And then we wonder why kids are such a mess.

Because that isn't it. It's not even within hailing distance of being it. Being dad is many, many things. A lot of them worrying. But the clichéd joshing that other men give each other is one of the strangest, most inexplicable raps of disinformation. So I thought, just for a bit, I could write this column about dadding. I don't think I'm particularly good at it. I'm certainly no expert. I've had complaints. But I'd just like to talk about it. I bet you'd like to talk about it. Write to me. Tell me stuff. If you're not a father, you're still a son. Tell me about your dad.

This magazine is full of columns that'll tell you how to put on a pair of trousers and what socks to wear with pimples in August, with pages of how to fornicate in uncomfortable ways, about how to drive, how to play golf and how to tell jokes. And they're all about how to be a boy forever. Just here for a bit, let's talk about how to be a man. Because let me tell you, this I do know: fatherhood, daddydom, is the Champions League of manhood. This is where it counts. Everything else is just rabbit and pose. The truth is no one has ever been an expert. But I'm enthusiastic about it. When it comes to your turn, it'll be big. It'll be brilliant. However it happened. My piece of advice? For what it's worth. Always be polite. And act younger than you are to her dad. Don't be cocky. Don't show off. He doesn't want to be your friend. He wants you to be her friend.